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  5. Pop Culture

Pop Culture

Objectives

a) Identify the omnipresence of the cultural dimension across all contemporary expressions;
b) Understand how these cannot be detached from social and technical conditions pf production;
c) Assimilate the evolution of the critical approaches to the concept of culture, and specifically the rhetoric of
exclusion/inclusion surrounding non-erudite culture;
d) Use a set of theoretical and methodological tools that allow their interpretation, provided there is an adequacy between these tools and the object they are supposed to analyse;
e) Apply, with a critical stance, the acquired knowledge to the understanding of contemporary realities;
f) Apply all this knowledge, in an original and autonomous way, to a specific research, and present the results, in oral and written form, in a clear and logically sustained way.

General characterization

Code

722011122

Credits

10.0

Responsible teacher

Jorge Manuel Martins Rosa

Hours

Weekly - 3

Total - 280

Teaching language

Portuguese

Prerequisites

None

Bibliography

CÁDIMA, Francisco Rui e ROSA, Jorge Martins (orgs.) (2001). Revista de Comunicação e Linguagens, n.º 30 («Pop»). Lisboa: Relógio d’Água.
FISKE, John (2010). Reading the Popular, Londres, Routledge.
SPIGEL, Lynn (2001). Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs, Durham (NC), Duke University Press.
STOREY, John (1994). Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader. Hertfordshire, Prentice Hall, 1998.
WILLIAMS, Raymond (1995). The Sociology of Culture. Chicago, University Of Chicago Press.

Teaching method

Being a post-graduate seminar, the teacher’s presentations must be previously prepared by the students, that must read the supporting bibliography to potentiate critical discussion. The students presentations will enrich the seminar, by introducing other cases and perspectives related to the syllabus contents.

Evaluation method

Evaluation method - Oral presentation in class and its discussion(30%), Preparation and execution of a final research paper, in three stages: a written project, with a workplan and preliminary bibliography(20%), Written essay(50%)

Subject matter

0. The (In)Definitions of the Concept of Culture.
1. From «Mass Culture» to Cultural Studies: Evolution and rehabilitation of the concept.
2. Pop Culture: Culture without art or everyday culture? From interpretation to reception.
2.1. Between Nature and Culture: The invention of everyday life.
2.2. Between the colonial gaze and its inversion.
2.3. Reinforcement or autodeconstruction of genre stereotypes?
2.4. The receiver as producer, between parody and irony.
3. Multiple media, multiple cultures? Case studies.